Holding Fire in Your Hand
by Rabbitprint
Summary: Future fic/modern setting, Enenra and Kamikui, background Enenra/Yoto Hime. Same universe as Carrying a Torch and the rest in the series, but can be read separately. The thing about smoking is that no matter what you pick for your fuel of choice, there's still something burning at its heart.


The thing about smoking is that no matter what you pick for your fuel of choice, there's still something burning at its heart.

A smoking _habit_ is exactly that. You become used to holding fire in your hand. If you're stupid, you forget. You let the cigarette dangle. You set the pipe aside. Over-familiarity and overconfidence team up to convince you not to think about it. Then you burn yourself - or other people - down.

You can't ever stop thinking about the fire in your hand.

* * *

They make it a routine every weekend, when both their bars have shut down at last and everyone else is sleeping in on a Sunday. There's a peculiar type of quiet which skulks in during those mornings, one that Enenra still feels lost in - as if the human world's forgotten just how much it hates her, distracted instead by trying to figure out where it lost its credit card the night before. The last drunks have been ushered towards cabs and capsule hotels, still in denial over Saturday ending. Students and office workers alike mash their faces into their pillows to catch up on sleep, already steeling themselves for the start of a new week. Everyone's sliding inevitably forward on the calendar. The only creatures who can escape time already have.

Safe at home, she and her brother shake off their illusions like sets of stained club gear. Kamikui fluffs his hair out with his fingers, his horns blooming into view. His second mouth yawns, its tongue unfurling and flapping like a flag. Sometimes he lets the rest of his scalp twine into its snake - three tongues total that way, all of them annoying - but usually he's too much of a glutton for having his hair brushed to make that sacrifice. Enenra looks human enough by default that she has nothing to reveal, but it's good to see her beastie roam. It coalesces into view around her heels and wriggles like a worm across the floor, bouncing back and forth as it gradually ascends towards the ceiling.

Together, they bring out their _kiseru_ pipes - the good ones, less than a century old, but which still have their charm. Their Heian favorites have been lost ages ago. Enenra and Kamikui are both practical in the manner of survivors: they know better than to scavenge too long in the ruins of their own lives, hoping to call the thinnest scraps of memories back to their hands. Both of them replaced the pipes, but kept their fondness for them intact.

They kick their feet out across the floor, pointing their heels at each other and ignoring politeness. Their apartment is cheap, covered with withered tatami that gets pulled up and replaced every time the tenancy turns over. Kamikui digs for their tobacco. Enenra packs the fire pot so they can light it. The bamboo stem of her _kiseru_ has started developing a crack in one end, seeping longer and longer each month by millimetres; she'll have to replace it eventually, but for now, she's willing to ignore the erosion of time.

They burn their tobacco at leisure, filling the room with hazy curls. The mandatory smoke detectors are all sabotaged, just in case. The heat detectors don't care. Their apartment's walls are thin enough to leak the smell through, however, so Enenra cracks the balcony door to let the smoke escape, drifting away where it won't stain the neighbors' laundry. They pick top-floor rentals for a reason, but the complaints rack up anyway.

Good thing Enenra and Kamikui never stay anywhere too long.

While they relax, she gets out the combs. Kamikui already has a mirror in his hand, squinting and fussing at his face as he sprawls. She ignores his calculated pouts, and settles behind him to brush out his hair, fanning it across the tatami while she works around his horns and her beastie noses idly at her leg in hopes of tobacco scraps.

"I miss having a salon," Kamikui grumps. His second tongue flaps like a dying snake, rudely thrashing over her knees in exaggerated boredom. "_Look_ at this dryness in my skin. I'm not getting nearly enough nutrition this way, not with having to skim leftovers from the wig shops. Most of the time it all ends up synthetic - _damn_ those Kanekalon brats!"

"Salons are the first place they looked for you, little brother," she reminds him, gathering another fistful in her palm. "Anyway, you complained about only having split ends and bleach damage to eat."

He mock-shudders, and kicks a heel petulantly against the tatami. "My hair's getting ruined enough on its _own_ with how often it gets caught in the subway. All those other _nasty_ passengers, tangling it up in their suitcases and bag straps. And seatbelt buckles! And _doors_, just _wrecking_ the ends, hacking it short myself would be a mercy at this point - "

She tunes out Kamikui's ranting automatically as he loses himself in it, lulled by the familiar rhythm. There's enough left in the conditioner bottle that she pops it open to begin working it through his hair - oil is better, but too dangerous, unless she wants to risk immolating her little brother with her own _kiseru_ \- but then her brother surprises her with a sigh, tilting his head back and nearly impaling her arm. "What about you, sis? Have you heard from Yoto Hime recently?"

Now it's Enenra's turn to grouse. "Yoto _never_ texts first," she grumbles, and slathers a cool handful of conditioner on his scalp, causing his second mouth to contort in protest. Ignoring his squeak, she smears her fingers indifferently down, smudging his ear. "She's still so _shy_, even after all these years. I don't know if I haven't heard anything because she's in trouble, or if she just doesn't get any reception in whatever back-end country town she's ended up in this time, trying to take care of Aobozu and his minions. Or if she's just forgotten that batteries need to get recharged to stay alive. _Again._"

Forgetting to hold still, Kamukui twists his head back and forth as he returns to studying his profile in reflection, carelessly yanking his hair out of her fingers. Conditioner leaves milky streaks on the shoulder of his shirt. "Can't she at least find a tourist hotel and steal its wifi?"

Enenra's sigh is even more melodramatic than his. "With that pack of monks in tow?" she complains, and follows it up with an annoyed click of her tongue, as crisp as a trigger being pulled. "Aobozu and Juzu are awful at blending in even when she _can_ convince them to wear modern clothes. And that Hitotsume kid - _he's_ a disaster in the making. I wish she'd just abandon them, but she says the meditation's still helping her stay calm, and it's not like she'd come to us even if she did. Heian-kyo was hard enough on her. She'd never recover from Tokyo."

"We could move to the country."

"We'd die." Enenra's voice is as curt as her fingers. "Civilization is where we find our best food these days, little brother. Not enough spirits around for us to snack on - and even if there were, we've got no reason to help our enemy by thinning the herd."

She scowls impotently at the facts, and then tugs too hard on Kamikui's scalp, forcing him to lean backwards against the pressure. He makes a pained, needy noise and tries to squirm upright, which is her only cue to ease her grip: a grudging apology.

"Siiiiis," he whines. "Aren't you done yet?"

She eyes his second tongue as it wriggles closer to her knee. "Don't you _dare_ move."

"Ennnnn_nnnnn._"

"Behave, or I'll give you a spanking," she retorts, half-serious - sometimes her little brother needs his dignity squashed firmly back into place - and gives one of his shorter horns a firm prod. "Don't forget, I'm more than willing to scrub you down and start all _over_ again."

Kamikui listens to the warning for once, settling down obediently and stacking his hands back in his lap. "Well, maybe someday she'll change her mind," he relents, with an optimism so careless that it masquerades as insolence, dismissing all the odds against them as if they were little more than jealous gossip.

With a quick roll of her wrists, Enenra flips her brother's hair back around his horns, draping each lock back in place. "Someday," she agrees, without much heart in it, and wipes her hands off before reaching for her pipe.

It's not the first time they've talked about their situation - past and future both, it's all one and the same by now, a single looping rut with no exit. It's been centuries since spirits have been respected, or even acknowledged as _real_; they're no longer creatures to appease, but mere myths to use for color in movies and books, imaginary characters in stories where mortals always win in the end. Enenra's surrounded by a million versions each day - eight million, it feels like, one to deny each _kami_ \- and in each tale, her kind is left dead or degraded. _Human_ is the pinnacle of existence now that there aren't any other predators to fear. They're entitled to everything. No other lives are as intelligent as humans, no other creatures experience the same emotions as them, no other existences are worth as much. Only humans feel compassion, or are capable of altruism. Only humans feel _love._

Enenra has to constantly remind herself that she can't kill them in broad daylight and saunter away. Rather, she _shouldn't._ It's a struggle.

Kamikui, on the other hand, has never been particularly tempted towards violence for any higher ideal than his own whims. He'll never be bothered by how high humans place themselves; he always sets himself above them first.

She finishes the last dying drag of tobacco in her pipe, feeling it settle in her lungs, and stands up to clamber around him and empty out the ash. Her beastie rolls over to show its belly; she ignores its plea, only jabbing it with her toe as she makes her way towards the open balcony door, and puffs a spiteful plume of smoke into the city air.

It's lost within seconds: a pointless spurt of mist that not even Enenra can track. She stares bleakly out the window, so caught up in her own brooding that she doesn't realize her brother has also fallen silent until he speaks again.

"Am I really still beautiful, sister?" Kamikui's attention remains fixed on his mirror - it's never left it - but uncertainty has crept into the edges, trapping himself with his own reflection. He frowns. Doubt tightens his eyes. "Am I beautiful _enough?_"

She starts to answer automatically - but pauses, caught voiceless in a moment between memories. The hazy shadows of the room paint half of her brother's face like a bruise. It draws another picture between them, of another morning years distant: of dirt on his skin, cheeks hollow, welts souring on his arms. She'd taken a tally of each one of those marks. It's been centuries since the last time any onmyōji managed to bind her brother, back when they were still getting used to how the world had changed, but she'll never forget how Kamikui had looked afterwards.

She blinks, blinks _hard_, and forces herself to look at him as he is now in the present: healthy and clean and _safe._

"Yes," she promises fiercely. "Yes. You are very beautiful, little brother."

* * *

Their safety is set out in numbers, the guidelines of which are declared by everyone except for themselves. Years they can stick around before their lack of aging becomes suspicious. Price tags for buying new furnishings and discarding the old ones safely, before traces of their spiritual presences can layer up too thick. Kilometres between themselves and any other spirits they know in the area, maintaining a safe distance just in case.

The number of times they can afford to be caught is zero, and always will be.

Enenra has a name printed on the latest identification records she haggled Shoyo for, and it's served her for five years running. It's got another three left before it expires. Shoyo's prices never get lower over the decades, but they never get higher either, so she supposes that's enough of a regular's discount. Either way, she can't complain. He could extort her and Kamikui effortlessly if he wanted - other yōkai have to go through far less scrupulous scribes - so a flat rate's as good as any gift.

Each year, it seems as if there's some new type of credential that they need to forge. Photos, faces, thumbprints, chips. It's harder and harder to keep their bellies full. Enenra's lucky to get fed thanks to the bars, which are enough of a refuge from Japan's new public smoking laws that she doesn't feel threatened. The environment suits her: hazy, private, where she can either take the shape of a woman or remain a cloudiness in the air, drifting along the stools. Just another stranger, there and gone. Anonymity has always served her well; it's easier to vanish when no one is paying attention to you anyway.

Both she and her brother keep as low a profile as they can. They're never going to be completely free, but if they can offend as few onmyōji as possible, maybe they can dodge any confrontations which will end up with each of their names scrawled across a bounty list.

The two are usually tied together; revenge is an accuracy, not an accident.

For now, each day managed is another day survived. Kamikui's working in one of the other bars in Shinjuku ni-chōme - one that's more open to foreigners than others, blond hairs mixing with red and brown - but Enenra manages her own. It's a nice, quiet small second-floor lesbian bar, one she used to be a patron of herself before she bought it from its previous owner. It's a risky investment to have physical property and be tied to a location with licenses and financial histories, but the urge bit her hard, and hasn't let go since. She doesn't want to admit how much it _matters_, getting to feel like they've got a safe place to stop at for a little while, something stable that belongs to them in all their endless rentals and part-time jobs. Her current identity is only temporary anyway; she's never held any illusions of permanence.

And her bar is so easy to overlook. It's tiny. It barely turns a profit. The only entryway is along an alleyway that's neatly hidden ten minutes from the nearest train station. The sign is a small red band that's bolted to the top of another bar's flashier neons; you'd have to be a local to spot it at all.

Luckily enough, her customers also came with the business title, inherited along with the worn leather barstools and cramped cubbies on the side. They're regulars. They've been coming to the same spot for years, back when her bar was run by the previous manager and Enenra herself was on the other side of the counter. For some of them, it's been even longer. She's already picked out a few who would be good choices to ask to inherit, when the time comes - Sasaki, Rimiko, Bebe - assuming they're interested. Rimiko's girlfriend is stuck up north in Akita; Bebe might go back overseas. A few of Enenra's part-timers might work too, but they're in and out on a monthly basis, unsure if it's safe to commit when the social stigma could ruin everything about their future prospects.

There's time left to decide, Enenra keeps telling herself. There's time.

She knows them all, faces and nicknames and scraps of their personal histories that they feel safe enough to share. They call her Big Sister too, giggling and flirting boldly with her for practice. She calls them cabs and books last-minute capsule rooms when they're too drunk to unlock their own phones, paying the fare from her own pocket and sending them home in pairs to avoid predators on the subway. She listens to them drink bitterness down along with their _shochu_, railing about their treatment as office ladies, and sometimes - sometimes - she lets them wrap an arm around her waist, and feel welcome for a time with another living being.

And if she basks in their courage and resilience and determination to remember who they are, beneath the stiff prisons that are built around them - to drink in a _ni-chōme_ bar, even as their friends and relatives continue to shake their heads and insist, _she'll grow out of it any day now_ \- then what of it? It doesn't hurt her girls to keep Enenra sleek and fed. She's not taking their courage away from them, merely lapping at the excess strength that they radiate, warm and bright like suns.

She's not so foolish as to hurt the creatures she feeds upon. That's the fastest way to starve.

She doesn't need to eat their souls, of course. It's the smoke that rises up from them, from the coals in their hearts that burn with the hope and ambition and _pride_ of their lives, no matter how much society tries to smother them: _this_ smoke, she breathes in hungrily. She drinks in the heat that ripples off their souls with each open-mouth kiss she shares with them, tasting their defiance, their insistence against an entire world that denies their self-worth. The knowledge that they're still fighting keeps her chest warm. The fires of their determination fill her belly, simmering with the anger and injustice of generations who have been told, _the perfect woman is one who obeys._

But the smoke from those fires is all they dare to show. She tastes it on them with each frustrated smile, each sharp edged laugh, and she pours them another drink before they go.

It's no different from the Heian years. That's one thing Enenra _does_ wish was different, even though their fury keeps her fed. In every era, there always ends up being something buried down deep in people's hearts, whether they're human or yōkai: something determined, something angry, that keeps on going no much the world tries to smother it, smouldering in the center of every face that's been ordered to smile.

* * *

There are a couple of new customers when she opens that Saturday night, trickling in with the uncertainty of first-timers. One's butterfly-shy, ducking through the doorway with a nervous giggle already on her face. She brightens up like the moon once she spots one of the other girls though, sliding eagerly into the booth across from her friend. Enenra fills her mug up extra-tall, foam lapping at the rim as she hands over their first round with a wink.

The other woman doesn't look like she's meeting anyone in particular, taking a seat at the furthest curve of the bar's counter and casting cautious, assessing glances at the other drinkers. Too hesitant to really be looking for a hookup; every time someone meets her eyes, the woman's shoulders hunch and she ducks her head away first. She drops a name halfway through ordering - Reiko, almost certainly not her real one, but they never have to be in Enenra's bar - and burns through her first beer quickly, like she feels the pressure to prove her right to be there at all. When no one challenges her, she nurses her second more moderately, staring morosely at it while the rush of alcohol finishes settling in her stomach.

She's cute. Very cute. Short-cropped hair that tickles her jawline, tiny round ears that curve like the moon. Her teeth are a little crooked, but in a natural way. Could be thirty, could be twenty, but Enenra's no good at human ages anyway.

It's the _stubbornness_ which Enenra picks up on the most though, a resilience that's far more interesting than a mortal who's trying to simply endure their own suffering. Enenra's seen too much of that in all her years; it's boring, it does nothing to feed her. But this, _this_ is familiar. She can see it simmering with the efficiency of the woman's motions, the way she keeps her hands controlled instead of making any wasted gestures. It's there in the way that Reiko lifts her chin up with a little toss each time, like she's shaking off the weight of a palm patting her head, heavy with condescension.

Enenra watches Reiko through the first parts of the night, gauging the woman's familiarity with her surroundings. The other new girl leaves early with her friend, hands tugging excitedly on each other while they hunt out a spot for dinner. A few other customers come in, eyeing Reiko speculatively, but Reiko doesn't respond to them. She's huddled in tight, only daring to glance up at the other drinkers occasionally, like she's afraid they'll mark her as an interloper before she can even properly fit in.

Finally, Enenra breaks the silence around the woman. "New to the area?" she asks as she wipes down an imaginary water drip on the counter, just to start the conversation.

"I'm not," Reiko begins to protest, and then grimaces. She takes another swallow of her beer, and sets the mug down a little too hard. "I don't really go out drinking like this," she concludes awkwardly, which could mean anything from _in ni-chōme_ to _at all_, really. Her shrug is one-shouldered, like she's already trying to brush away her inexperience, and any associated shame with it. "But my family, well - it's not like I can do much worse in their eyes by now."

Enenra lets a few of the gaps fill themselves in with that, and folds up the rag. "They don't approve, right?"

Reiko scowls again, a brief flash of disgust that's quickly smoothed over into a practiced facade once more, every line of her expression perfect and pat. "They don't think I'm worth as much as my brothers," she acknowledges, finishing off her mug at last and pushing the empty glass absently forward with her fingertips. "That I don't have the same kind of competitive edge, and I'm no good for the family business. They started talking about _inheritance_ again this week, how to divide up the responsibilities - and, of course, I'm not invited."

Eyeing the empty beer mug, Enenra picks it up, but fills a glass of water to replace it instead, offering it in place of another round. A small one, not large; the one-to-one rule only works with drinkers who are already willing to pace themselves. More determined drunks will just keep adding fluid to their stomachs, filling their bellies up before their bodies can actually process the alcohol, and send themselves headlong into vomiting on an early schedule.

"Pricks like that, it's their loss," she says: a platitude that's both comfort and utter futility at the same time.

From the way that Reiko's eyes narrow, the woman hears both sides at once. She gives another angry, fractional toss of her head, staring at the glass clenched in her fingers. "I could be _better_ than them all," she insists, and the words have the cadence of a promise recited so many times over that the sentence no longer has an ending. "All I need are the right tools."

By the end of the night - all the worst drunks having been shuffled off to safer places, the early hours of Sunday ebbing closer to the dawn - Enenra's feeling every minute of work dragging like lead on her bones. Saturdays are the worst to clean up after, but Kamikui always comes by after his own bar closes and helps her wipe down the tables and cash out the register, so she doesn't have to do it alone. Her beastie's at home, of course - she only tolerated its mischief for a week before exiling it from her workplace, even though it means listening to it whine twice as much. Unfortunately, that also means she'll have to entertain it too when they get home, working off all its pent-up energy when she has none of her own.

Finally, there's only herself and Reiko left in the bar, and Enenra can't avoid the inevitable any longer. She turns off the tiny glowing light of the outdoor sign, and stacks up the cleaning rags she'll need on one end of the counter. After that, she gives Reiko an assessing look; the woman switched over entirely to water at least an hour ago, and doesn't even look tipsy.

"Need a few hotel recommendations?" Enenra asks, just in case the woman's uncertain on the safer places to bed down in.

Luckily enough, Reiko waves her concerns away. "I can walk home from here. I'll be okay, the neighborhoods are well lit," the woman adds, as if guessing the next inevitable question. Then, with a shy, darting glance: "Do you want a hand closing up before I go?" There's a soft flush of red across her cheeks, either from the beer or from embarrassment, it's hard to tell. "Maybe... a hand with something else?"

Enenra hesitates, balancing the scales of weariness and sympathy. Reiko doesn't strike her as particularly worldly in _this_, either - and a good experience can make all the difference for a person who's still trying to feel their way around something new, something they've been told all along to avoid. It must have taken the woman all night to work up the courage to finally flirt with someone, nervousness holding her back until only the bartender was left standing as an option.

_Why not_, Enenra finally decides, remembering the embers of rebellion glittering in the other woman's soul. The taste of that same heat on Reiko's lips will keep her fed for weeks. "You're on."

* * *

They don't go back to Enenra's apartment, of course. There's a line between generosity and idiocy, and it's not the first time Enenra's briefly indulged with one of her own customers before. There are a few storage rooms in the bar where Enenra stores the liquor and supplies, and while leaning on boxes is hardly comfortable, she's also not stupid enough to take a total stranger into the office with the cash and financial stamps.

"Sorry for the mess," she says as she clicks on the light and steps inside, giving a glance around at the latest shipments. Even though it might send the wrong message to her partner, she's too distracted to really be caught up in the moment; she can't fool around for too long, not with Kamikui coming by soon. There's a clean table near the back, just the right height for Reiko to sit on - or lie back against - and Enenra pauses as she heads towards it. "Ever done something like this before?"

"A few times. Not with someone like you, though." The littlest smile darts across Reiko's face as she shakes her head. She takes one hesitant step forward, letting the door click shut behind her. Another step, and then she's sliding a hand into her jacket as if to check her phone - but when she pulls her fingers out again, they're holding a scrap of white paper instead, too large to be a receipt.

Even as Enenra's chin jerks up in alarm, it's too late. The _ofuda_ is already flaring blue, power spitting like a broken aurora over the walls, drawing a circle around the entire room they're standing in and turning it into a prison.

"Enenra," Reiko utters, enunciating the sounds perfectly. "_Obey._"

The syllables hit like hammers. There's no chance to react; Enenra's slamming into the floor before she can even consciously process her own name, all her muscles gone slack and useless. The binding is already weaving around her like a thousand heated needles sliding into her skin, each one searing her flesh and charring the tendons away. Her head is ringing from the impact; her elbow shrieks from where she landed on it with all her weight. She can't move to check it. She can't even scream out her pain. Her body is no longer her own - she belongs to this woman now, to this _onmyōji_, made into a vessel that can do nothing but yearn for the next order.

The spell's obedience numbs her limbs, and then her thoughts with brutal efficiency, one by one. All that's left is the formality. Reiko will recite the final words to tie Enenra's spirit into an official contract, and then Enenra will be obedient for the rest of her days, spared only by the mercy of death if it comes.

Smug in her victory, Reiko exhales and straightens up. She rakes her fingers through her hair in several rough strokes, tousling her bangs backwards as she observes Enenra on the floor. "You're not as powerful as I'd hoped," the woman comments. "But at least I can use you to catch someone better. Who knows? Maybe I can make a good trade of you afterwards."

The noise of Reiko's voice ripples and stretches, distorted like an ocean tide. Enenra can barely register what she's saying; everything comes through a distant echo chamber. She attempts to roll up her eyes, trying to focus on the woman as Reiko turns away to start checking the storage boxes, pulling out bottles of whiskey and idly examining the labels.

In the murk of Enenra's mind, only one thought remains, and she latches onto it desperately: it's already past closing time for her brother's bar.

If Reiko plans to wait out the next few hours until the trains start running again, then Kamikui will find them both. He has the keys. He'll come in calling Enenra's name, wandering into each room until he finally opens the wrong door - and discovers her waiting there, bound and enslaved to attack. Either Enenra will kill him outright, or Reiko will order her to beat him down until her brother's weak enough to be contracted by force. Either way, it'll be by Enenra's hands that he suffers.

He can't win; she knows he can't. She's always been stronger than he is.

She's always been the strong one.

Terror floods Enenra's chest: stronger than her own pain, colder than any of Reiko's words. She scrabbles for the sensation willingly as it overtakes her body, blotting out even the spell's control - as if her veins are formed from pure adrenaline, not smoke. Teeth grinding with the effort, she manages to drag a hand underneath herself - it feels like moving dead weight, everything heavy and lifeless - and tries to shove herself up. The spell presses her down like cement poured across her skin, already hardening into place. She can't lift her head, can't get her knees up, can't _react_, and her brother will be there at any moment, coming closer with each doomed step.

She grits her teeth, trying to command her entire body, hoping to pull herself out of her own flesh by force. Her mind screams with the refusal to submit. Her back feels like it's being torn apart, as if her ribs will split through the surface of her skin while her organs and muscles remain nailed to the floor, to transcend into pure willpower and leave everything else behind in a bloody ruin with her name on it.

The spell buckles against her thoughts, unable to keep both her form and emotions restrained - and then finally snaps, the circle shattering like neon glass.

Sensation roars back into Enenra's body like a hurricane, shrieking each of her nerves awake. All of her instincts urge her to flee instantly, but it's already too late: the onmyōji has the scent of her now, which makes it only a matter of time before a summoning circle drags Enenra back into it, no matter where in Japan she might run.

She doesn't waste any time in posturing - Reiko's already turning, startled, dropping the whiskey bottle in her hand as she reaches for another _ofuda_ \- and lurches upright, caring more about momentum than balance. She launches herself forward clumsily, bones already dissolving into smoke, and shoves a softening hand into Reiko's face to smother her.

Glass splinters in jagged chunks around their feet. Reiko stumbles back, knocking over boxes in a swarm of crashes while she claws at her nose and mouth. The _ofuda_ tangled in her fingers glitters with power. But even the most powerful onmyōji can't chant spells without oxygen; Reiko gasps soundlessly, tearing at her throat as Enenra's smoke chokes her, pressing past her teeth and down her windpipe, inflating her lungs with particles in place of breathable air, swelling them taut like twin balloons straining to pop.

But cunning works both ways. Reiko reels backwards, dropping the _ofuda_ as she fumbles for anything broad enough to use as a fan, and Enenra's forced halfway back into physical form in order to keep from getting swept weightlessly away She clings with one hand to Reiko's shoulder like a nightmarish parasite, their torsos pressed together, Enenra's fingers clawing into the other woman's back: a parody of lust that only intends to kill. Given something tangible in turn, Reiko digs through Enenra's half-solid body for purchase, stumbling haphazardly through the room until she slams them both against the wall - smashing Enenra's knuckles and loosening her grip - and then does it _again_, managing to pull Enenra far enough away that she can get an arm between them both, and shove it against Enenra's neck.

Pain clears Enenra's mind even through the dizziness; it makes her ruthless. Without hesitating, she congeals her arm back into flesh - still fully down Reiko's throat.

This, at last, stops the onmyōji in place. Reiko slides to her knees, her airway completely blocked now, her eyes wide with terror. Enenra twists her weight, sliding more of herself into the woman's body, feeling Reiko's jaw trying fruitlessly to bite her, her muscles failing to vomit: her body is a wet sleeve clenched around Enenra's arm. Muscles squirm as Reiko's tongue moves obscenely against Enenra's elbow, throat flexing around the forearm, clawing mindlessly in a panic at every part of Enenra that she can reach.

Enenra doesn't flinch.

The onmyoji dies with her eyes bulging, her lungs full.

Enenra pants for her own air, letting the rest of her body slowly take on human form again, fading into view like a bowl of salt dissolving in reverse, adding flesh back onto her bones grain by grain. She pulls herself together into a clumsy heap on the floor next to the corpse - but she doesn't withdraw her arm until the very last spasm of muscle against her fingers ceases, measuring the last, rudimentary twitches of a body that has passed through unconsciousness into brain death, and then beyond.

At last, she rolls herself away with a shudder. Her arm is soaked with fluid. Saliva on her elbow, blood under her nails from scraping at moist lung tissue. Mucus and tears and bile, all staining her, and even if she turned completely into smoke right now, she'd still carry all of them on her like a poison.

There's no pleasure in her victory. Reiko could have been any one of her girls. She'd have fit right in with the rest of Enenra's customers, armed with a brittle confidence from trying so hard, the jut of her chin as a defense against fear. Driven by the determination to grow strong and be recognized by her clan, Reiko was like any of the other women sheltering in Enenra's bar each night, and the more that Enenra thinks about it - how none of this needed to happen, how it _shouldn't_ have happened - the more she can't stifle her reaction anymore.

She's never killed like that before; she never wants to again. Rage bubbles up like vomit in the back of her throat, an acid too hot to swallow back down. She makes a sob that isn't scared, it's _angry_, angry that she has to live with fear defining each of her days instead of pride. The noise is barely muffled into her hands. Wet and bruised fingers cup her own cheeks as she howls against her palms, livid for both herself and for Reiko, because it was a _gruesome_ way to die, even for an onmyōji.

But most of all, she screams for herself, for everything that's been taken from her in the last thousand years, and _keeps_ being taken. Her home, her sustenance, her peace of mind. Her dignity. She doesn't _deserve_ to be made into the kind of monster that her hunters want her to be - and yet they give her no choice about it, hounding her into corners so that she has to conceal her nature like a seeping cancer. They own her without besting her, they've bound her without even needing to touch her, so that in the end - even if they never catch her - she will still have become the monster they've always said a yōkai truly is.

She's still shaking with fury by the time that Kamikui steps inside her bar, whistling as he locks the door behind him. She can hear him clattering around, shoving chairs idly back into place and scooping up empty glasses to line them up back on the counter.

"Sis? Are you still here?" His voice starts out confident, and then grows steadily more nervous as he works through the rooms, checking the office and bathroom next. "Did you grab more detergent?"

She doesn't answer. She can barely breathe without gasping. But by the time Kamikui finally opens the door to the storage room - cursing and dumping his bag to the floor as he takes in the sight of her - Enenra's finally managed to stop her hands from trembling, unclenching her fingers like rusty locks.

"It's okay, it's okay," he babbles, more for himself than her, and she collects herself at last with a final, sharp inhalation, firming her mouth with a determination that feels so numb, she can't tell which part of herself is on autopilot.

She's had her moment of weakness. This, too, is a number that counts down their safety: she's used up valuable minutes huddling lifelessly on the floor, and that's time which they won't get back. There are only so many hours left before another onmyōji arrives in search of their clansmate. The countdown is already ticking.

Steeling herself with the reminder of the clock, Enenra pulls her gaze away from the body and focuses on her brother at last, seeing the relief in his eyes. "I'm all right. The ritual didn't succeed," she adds, stating the obvious, but feeling better once it's said out loud, making it real with her own voice like a counterspell _kotodama_. "I don't think she had any partners, so we should have a little time to pack before anyone comes looking for her. Did you see anything funny on your way here?"

Kamikui shakes his head. He fumbles in his jacket until he can find a pack of cigarettes, lighting one and passing it over without being asked. She accepts it gratefully, pulling hard; tiny embers crackle and crawl up the length of the paper, and she can taste the smoke seeping into her body like a warm bath dissolving her bones.

As she smokes, her brother squats and examines the corpse, distastefully; it has nothing of what he requires, other than the barest nutritional needs. Neither one of them has resorted to dining on human corpses, even though they need every drop of power they can get. Even years later, Kamikui still sticks to his infatuated promise not to. Enenra never liked the practice to begin with.

"Don't _eat_ it," she snaps anyway, just in case the situation has finally tempted her brother into a final decline of standards. "You don't know what you could catch."

He scrunches up his nose in clear disgust. "I'll get a _gaki_," he says, pulling out his phone and unlocking it with a few quick taps, already zooming to the contact list.

She shakes her head, shoving herself to her feet with the help of the wall. Her bruised hand sends a warning throb of agony as she does; the knuckles are already swelling up from being smashed into the concrete. "Call one of the emissaries - Shiro Mujou, he'll pick up even if it's us. Since it was an onmyōji who attacked, Lady Enma's people will help with the corpse. We've already got our hands full purging the apartment."

Kamikui makes a jerky nod, and swipes further down the list. "I'll start packing up the safe," he volunteers, even as he's holding up the phone to his ear, the call already ringing. "We should be able to make it in one trip, if we're lucky. Hello? Ah, Shiro Dōji, is Big Shiro there - "

Enenra doesn't protest as he ducks out of the room, chatting away. Every centimetre of her wants to follow behind - but caution catches her at the door, hooking her in place even as she grimaces at practical necessities. Without letting herself think twice about it, she whirls back to the onmyōji's corpse, stooping down to root through the jacket's pockets until she finds everything she's looking for. The _ofuda_ are no surprise; neither is the pouch marked with the crest of the Minamoto clan. Inside are a stack of paper dolls, waiting with the mute menace of a handful of explosives. And then - sandwiched between them like a marker - is another slice of paper, folded in half as crisply as if scored by a knife.

The address of Enenra's bar makes up the first two lines, written by a careful, cramped hand she doesn't recognize. Following that, there's her own name. Then another: _Shuten Dōji._

The last column is only one _kanji_ long, a single notation floating without context on the page, and Enenra stares at the character for _light_ in bewildered confusion.

_Hikari_, she thinks, trying to remember an appropriate yōkai who might fit, and then wildly splitting the word into its other forms when nothing comes to mind. _Kō. Akira._

_Mitsu._

She doesn't risk taking the note with her. Instead, Enenra memorizes the words and piles all the papers all together in the center of the concrete floor. They catch fire easily from her lighter, edges curling and blackening in moments. She watches them all burn, taking care not to breathe in this particular smoke, and scatters the ashes afterwards so that they can never hurt any of her kind again.

* * *

By the time they make it back home - sacrificing even more of their funds thanks to a taxi and its exorbitant late-night surcharge - dawn has completely drenched the sky. For everyone else in the world, it's another regular Sunday morning: a day suspended between one week ending and another beginning, barely worth acknowledging at all.

They pack everything at home in a rush, checking the garbage schedule so they know which kind of materials can get bundled and dumped without drawing attention. Kamikui pulls his stash of hair clippings out of the cabinets, plastic bags carefully labeled with the sources they've traded from, a scant set of rations to keep him going. Enenra throws her cigarettes helter-skelter into a backpack; they won't give her everything she needs, but the taste will be comforting enough. Enma's people can cover the cleanup of the bar, and - if the Mujou are feeling generous - even give the apartment a run-over, but it's still up to Enenra and Kamikui to handle the worst of the debris. They'll need to dispose of everything they can, physical as well as spiritual. If they leave too many traces of themselves behind, then another onmyōji might be able to scour the building for traces of their essence, and summon them by force.

Kamikui hands off a bucket of salt water to her, particles still dissolving in a swirl at the bottom. She hauls it clumsily into the bedroom, liquid sloshing against her leg, and swipes a wet rag over everything she can reach - everything she might have ever touched while living there, leaving smears of her spirit behind. Drops trail behind her in staccato loops, leaving streaks on the walls and tatami. When she reaches the closet, she flings the boxes onto the floor to dig through their clothes and documents, making sure to grab anything with her and Kamikui's current identifications. Any bank accounts they have are useless now. They'll have to get by with only the cash they have on hand until they can find Shoyo, and start the process all over again.

She works with brisk familiarity through the paperwork - deftly splitting things into piles for trash, saving, and burning later - all the way down until she hits one folder at the bottom of the pile, and finds herself flipping through the licensing documents for her bar.

Sight of the establishment's name stops her hard. Enenra sits down right in the middle of the floor, all her momentum hamstrung. She can't just pass the business down to one of her own patrons now. Not anymore. Anyone she links her bar to will be considered a suspect by the onmyōji - even if they're human - and the Minamoto might just seize them as a hostage in hopes of luring her back. She's got their clan's blood on her hands. Even if they would have thrown away Reiko without blinking twice, the Minamoto can easily use their daughter's death as an excuse to act, pointing to her loss as proof of the dangers of spirits and how any amount of violence can be justified against yōkai.

The more that Enenra thinks about it, the more she wonders if Reiko's family might have even planned it that way.

None of that matters now. None of that - including Enenra's bar. It's become yet another choice that the Minamoto have stripped away, denying her effortlessly at every opportunity. The bitter unfairness of it all means nothing to them; the bar will be closed and locked with no explanation until it gets repossessed, with its lease cancelled and security deposit lost. Her part-timers will be short their paychecks. Her patrons will never know why their refuge got ripped away from them, why their home abandoned them first without any warning. The most Enenra can do is drop her key anonymously in the mail, picking a random address from the taxi stops she's called for them before, and hope that one of the women can sneak into the building to take whatever mementos matter to them the most.

She stares down at the papers in her hands, and finally shoves them back into their folder, and from there, into the _burn later_ pile.

Kamikui's already halfway through destroying his phone when she ducks back into the main room, running through the factory reset without even bothering to thumb through the contents one last time. He slips out the chips and battery, snapping and splitting what's easily malleable with his own strength before tossing it all together in a separate bags to be disposed of in sections. He extends a hand automatically in Enenra's direction, expecting her to toss her own over - but she resists, tightly gripping her phone as if her palms have turned into a vise, and she's planning to break it herself.

When the phone doesn't crack, however, Kamikui frowns in concern. "Sis, we need to _go_," he urges, and then, more gently, "Lady Enma will let Yoto Hime know what happened. You can't risk sending her a message yourself, you _know_ that. We've got no idea how the Minamoto tracked us down, or who else they know about. For everyone's safety, we _have_ to disappear."

"I can't," Enenra insists, struggling to unclench her fingers - struggling, because he's right and only trying to help, and some part of her wants to scream about it anyway. "I can't leave Yoto like this. You know how worried she gets. Who knows when we'll be able to talk to her again? It'll be _years_ before we can even start feeling safe. Until then, all she'll know is that the Minamoto are tracking us - and every day, she'll have to worry that it's already too late."

Everything she says is valid, all of it - and utterly pointless despite its truth. There's no use even in arguing; it would be like trying to outshout the sun. Faced with an impossible debate, Kamikui shakes his head. "You can't let the Minamoto find _her_, either," he reminds her, franticness cracking the evenness of his voice. "Of all people, Yoto Hime will understand why we're doing it. And you don't want to lead them back to her either, right?"

"I know!" she barks, because she _does_ know. She's just not ready, even though they should _always_ be ready these days, all the time. The stubbornness in her makes her want to stay and fight, pointlessly: one last stand to end it, except that nothing _will_ be ended except for herself. "And the girls," she protests. "I need to just have a little more time, to make sure they'll be okay - "

"En," her brother says, and there's a strange note in his voice that catches her short.

She looks up to see his face: pale and miserable and struggling to be brave. He swallows hard. "If you need to, I can go on my own. You'll be safe here as long as you stay in smoke form. You can - you can use it to hide, to make sure everyone's okay, work with Lady Enma so that you can go to Yoto Hime once things die down. I can... I'll meet you there later when it's safe. We'll figure out how to make it work, even in the country. I'll be fine there. I promise, I'll be fine."

For a single, devastating second, she wants to say yes. Without her brother to worry about, she wouldn't have to bother with things like apartments, or even money; there'd no risk of being tracked back home when she wouldn't even have one to begin with. It's tempting to hold her ground instead of running again - to fight back here, where she's been attacked, where she can use all of her powers to try and remind her hunters that she's just as dangerous as they are. To not have to abandon everything behind her, as if she never deserved it in the first place.

But even as she feels herself bending towards the choice, Enenra pulls the rest of her strength together, staring down the centuries with as little mercy as Takamagahara itself. She can't afford to waver now. She knows the responsibility of being herself: of being indifferent and fearless, the kind of spirit who can watch any amount of injustice go by without bothering to lift a hand to stop it. It's the only way to survive hundreds of years - _thousands_ by now, refusing to be smothered into oblivion by a world that's never cared if anyone in it lives or dies or suffers the entire way through.

She can do it. She's not going to let herself have the option of being anything else.

"No," she says, and means it.

Kamikui loosens a breath. Life trickles gradually back into his face, thawing it out from his own unspoken fears. "Are you sure?" he asks, though he's already reaching out again for her phone.

She hands it to him, and shoves the paperwork in the nearest bag, zipping it shut with finality. As she finishes tugging it closed, she gives one last look around the apartment, taking in the disheveled, stripped-down mess they've left behind, reeking of the purification of salt. Once the two of them step out the door, they'll be back on the road again, seeking out the next safe house, and then the next: an endless march around Japan, always trying to stay just one step ahead, always running from the pursuit just one step behind.

Heat stirs in her chest.

_This will all be different someday_, she promises - to herself, to their lost home, their lost lives. To Yoto Hime, hidden somewhere out in the country, possibly never to be seen again. To all the other yōkai out there who have been forced to cringe and crawl, living as sparsely as they can in hopes of not attracting the wrong kind of attention. To all the human women who will come to Enenra's bar that night expecting a safe refuge, and who will find only a locked door and no answers for the rejection. To the person Reiko might have been, without her family weighing down upon her - and who she had managed to be anyway in the end, seeking to rise past those restraints despite the risks. So many creatures whose hearts still burned, underestimated and smothered for so long that the world forgot they even had a spark to begin with.

_You may think there's nothing left to us anymore_, she vows, throwing out the words as recklessly as a curse that will never be revoked, _but we're still __**alive**__, even as you overlook or dismiss us, or think we're too worthless to count. We're alive, and we'll be here at the end of it all, no matter __**what**__ you try to do to change that._

"I'm sure," she declares, turning her back on yet another set of lives surrendered. She bends down, grabbing her own backpack and hefting it onto her shoulder. Inside, she can feel her beastie bump and squirm restlessly against the nylon, packed alongside their brushes and pipes. "Let's go."


End file.
